We’ve done hours and hours of work, so far, on a web page designed to help those in Sydney, Australia, who have, or may suspect they have, polycystic ovarian syndrome. It’s designed for those who believe, as we do, that the specialists most likely to be the best to see and use are those with ordinary email addresses who provide reasonable responses to reasonable emails sent to them.

So far, we’ve put together a list of 24 Sydney Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, with ordinary email addresses, to whom we’ve sent this letter in an email.

So far we’ve got 10 replies, 2 advising that helping those with polycystic ovarian syndrome is not within their areas of expertise, and 8 others advising that they may be able to help.

Hopefully, after you’ve carried out such further research as you may feel advisable on those who’ve provided replies, you will come up with the names of 3 specialists who you feel and who you find are at least worth having first consultations with.

Once you’ve got the ordinary email addresses, less than an hour’s work could save you from so much heart ache and perhaps disaster – and we speak from bitter experience, after falling into the hands of a surgeon who has damaged us for life, who has probably never responded to an email in his life.

Note: Of course you can use this list of 24 ordinary email addresses to help you locate Sydney Obstetricians and Gynaecologists who may be able to help you with problems other than polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Readers experiencing double vision need to realise that there are two types of Ophthalmologists. (Eye Specialist doctors.)

There are those who are just after your money. They tell you that it’s essential that you know the cause of your double vision, trying to scare you out of your wits by telling you that it’s cause could be “very serious,” purely so that you will spend more and more time in their rooms incurring more and more expenditure, while they investigate and investigate. One of our readers was referred to one of these people, (a well known Ophthalmologist, Dr AAA,) and ended up spending 3 or 4 hours in her rooms seeing different people and being subject to different tests and learnt nothing. When he sent Dr AAA an email complaining, this is what he got back.

If Dr AAA had had her way, he’d still be in her rooms being investigated, years later.

Fortunately, our reader, quite by accident, (no help from the Optometry profession,) came to consult one of the other type, a Dr BBB, who solved all his problems in less than 5 minutes.

Firstly, Dr BBB said that the practical problems of his double vision could be solved by having prisms in his glasses – and they were. For years our reader’s double vision had been forcing him to keep one eye closed when he was driving a car, causing him to be a danger to himself and others on the road, to the point where he was seriously thinking that he might have to give up driving a car, which would have been a disaster. But with prisms in his glasses, it was like a miracle had happened – it was like he was 30 again.

Secondly, Dr BBB said that if he was concerned that his double vision might be caused by anything serious, he could have an MRI of his brain – which he did, and it was clear.

Dr AAA’s strategy was to not mention prisms in glasses nor MRIs of the brain – and this strategy was blown completely to pieces in five minutes by Dr BBB’s advice.

There is an aspect of all this that still has us completely puzzled. Why do Optometrists refer patients to people as completely and utterly useless as the Dr AAAs of this world, never mentioning prisms or MRI’s of the brain themselves – we know of at least two that do. Does Dr AAA offer kick backs? Is she their friend? Do they fancy her? Why?

Obviously, the Dr AAAs of this world, and their Optometrist mates are to be avoided like the plague.

Further to this post, we have emailed a further letter to Mr Secord today which includes this:-

Is there any aspect of the NSW health system that you have an interest in or that you care about?

We’re not expecting that there will be any acknowledgement of this letter, just as there haven’t been any acknowledgements, let alone responses, to anything that has been sent to him in the past.

Getting to know what the Walt Secords of this world are like is easy – what’s to be done about it is the hard part.

But perhaps that’s becoming easier too. 30 or 40 years ago someone advised us, “If you want to know what someone is like, get them to write something down.” With emails this has become SO easy.

If people vote for people who have Walt Secord’s track record of writing things down, at least with us, they have only themselves to blame if they don’t perform up to expectations – what they’re like is staring them in the face. Perhaps the people will gradually realise this.

Of course, Mr Secord got into the Parliament without ever being voted for by the people.

One of our readers made a complaint about a Dr AAA to the Commission. It was dismissed for, amongst other reasons, that there was “no indication that Dr AAA was dishonest in her response to the Commission.” In response this letter has just been emailed to the Commission, with a copy going to Sue Dawson the NSW Health Care Complaints Commissioner.

To us there’s nothing exceptional about this story – that’s how it is, readers.

Dr AAA doesn’t care!

Westmead Government Hospital doesn’t care!

NSW Health doesn’t care!

The NSW Health Care Complaints Commission doesn’t care!

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency doesn’t care!

The NSW Government doesn’t care!

The Government Members of Parliament don’t care!

The Opposition Members of Parliament don’t care!

Perhaps some of our readers believe otherwise. We’d be so happy to hear from them.

How easy would it be for the NSW Minister for Health, Brad Hazzard, for instance, to provide some indication that he might care by sending an email to the Westmead Government hospital asking them to comment on the above story – it would take about 5 minutes. He mightn’t have to do any more than this. As management people say, it’s often enough if underlings know that that their superiors know – i.e. if the people at Westmead Hospital, Dr AAA in particular, know that the Minister for Health knows.

Briefly, a Matt Dooley, after being signed up for over 4 months to get the NBN through Telstra, and having spent over 100 hours during those 4 months talking to them on the phone trying to get it working, decided a sit in in a Telstra Store might work. And when Telstra called the Police to have him removed – no mention of them trying to resolve his problems – lo and behold:-

Further quotes from this article.

Note the comment: “It’s all still barely working and the case manager refuses to call me.”

To us, the most amazing thing about this story is that anyone ever starts dealing with Telstra, let alone keeps trying to deal with them. Spending 100 hours on the phone to them and getting nowhere is just normal Telstra, and has been for more than 50 years. Of course, it’s a matter of competition – but hopefully there are other organisations that are better to deal with than them when it comes to getting connected to the NBN.

If you go to this hospital’s website, you read, “After 75 years of outstanding service, Concord Hospital enjoys a well-earned reputation for excellence in providing healthcare.”

This despite the fact that a 13 year boy who had been so dreadfully sick that he’d been admitted into it’s emergency at 6.55 pm one evening, (on the 9 Aug 2014,) was discharged, less than 8 hours later, even though it was 2.20 am in the morning!!! no less sick, perhaps more so, only to be dead within a further 12 hours – see this Sydney Morning Herald article.

Notwithstanding that, as he was being “kicked out,” he was so sick that he couldn’t walk to his parent’s car, – he had to be wheeled in a wheel chair – were any of the hospital staff concerned? Apparently not! Apparently not!

So what did the Coroner think of all this? Her recommendation – that “Concord Hospital pay more attention to parents’ concerns.” This would tend to indicate, although it’s not entirely clear, that the parents expressed concerns, but that no attention was paid to them.

In such circumstances, perhaps the parents could have sent an email expressing their concerns to perhaps even the CEO of the hospital, or someone – it would only have taken 5 or 10 minutes. But we all know that hospitals avoid emails and emailing like the plague – it makes their people too responsible.

If you don’t believe us.

If you go to the hospital’s website and click on “Contact Us,” you are taken to a page that has this on it:-

But if you click on the “Email” shown, you are taken to an email address that doesn’t work!

And the same page has on it:-

But if you click on “by clicking here,” you are only taken to the same email address that doesn’t work.

After nearly 10 years of working on finding the very best doctors and avoiding those who are not the very best, we’ve come up with something quite simple which we practice and strongly advocate to find the very best – and that is that if anyone has any medical problems, that they should email those specialists who they think may be best able to help them asking two questions:-

Firstly, “Is helping those with this particular medical problem or these particular medical problems within your areas of specialisation,” and,

Secondly, “If not, is there anyone else you can suggest?”

We find that, if emails like this are sent out to, say, 20 doctors, you will get 1, 2 or 3 replies that really stand out, that encourage you to think that the doctors who have provided these replies may be worthwhile consulting at least once. And that there are at least 4 chances out of 5 that these doctors are the most helpful doctors you can see, i.e. the odds of finding the very best are increased tremendously.

To us sending out such emails is about finding out two things – firstly, of course, whether helping people like you is one of their areas of specialisation, but secondly if they use ordinary emails.

To us, if a doctor provides a good response, themselves or through others on their behalf, it indicates five things – firstly, that they are into communication and are capable with it, (many doctors aren’t like that if you’re sitting right in front of them,) secondly, that they or someone within their organisation has the job of providing reasonable responses to reasonable emails, EXTREMELY important if you are to go on and become one of their regular patients, thirdly, they are prepared to stand behind what they do and say – it’s harder not to stand behind things that have been put in writing, fourthly, that they are prepared to make sending them letters as easy and convenient as possible, and fifthly, that they have moved on into the 21st Century.

Of course, sending out emails to 20 or more doctors may sound like a lot of hard work, and it is, if you have to first put together a a list of 20 or more doctors with ordinary email addresses, but once this has been done, and you have composed your email, you can easily send out 2o or more emails in less than an hour – depending on whether you want put the doctor’s name at the top of each email or just send out a general email. But it’s well worth doing if it helps you see only the most helpful, and, as we’ve found out recently ourselves, if it prevents you from getting tangled up with a bad doctor or bad doctors.

With this in mind we’ve put together such a list, of 33 Cardiologists, which you can access by using this link.